Miss Thing (My 15 yr old daughter) got a new phone yesterday and wanted to transfer her pictures from the old to the new. According to the first Verizon customer support person we spoke to we needed to re-format the smart card to a version that the new phone would accept. This required hooking up the old phone to the PC and connecting with LG directly to get the update. I spent an hour trying install the recommended driver to no avail. PLUS I had to do it with Miss Thing looking over my shoulder pointing out what I was doing wrong.
We were told that if the download didn’t work to go to a Verizon store and they could do the transfer for us. So today at 4:30 Miss Thing and I went to the Verizon Store next to the Super Target in Fishers. We were told by the receptionist @ Dr. Patrick Craig’s office that the employees at that location were particularly helpful and friendly – and they were – but they were unable to complete the transfer. They were so nice that they LOANED me an adapter and Miss Thing and I felt like we were making real progress.
A brief glimmer of success taunted us as we were able to download the pics to the computer – thanks to the adapter card LOANED to us by the friendly and helpful peeps at the Verizon Store next to the Super Target in Fishers – BUT we were unable to reload the pics on the new phone. Let’s see… that’s a half hour at the Fisher’s store, plus fifteen minute drive home, plus another 45 minutes computer time extracting the pictures, plus a lot more frustration at the time already wasted on what seemed to be a simple task.
So we called Verizon customer support AGAIN – 20 mins – and were told the store at Greyhound Pass in Carmel could resolve our issues. He told us he would contact that location and instruct them how to accomplish the transfer. The customer support guy also told us he was going to make sure we were NOT charged for the transfer because of everything that had transpired up to this point. We were instructed to get to the store by 8:30 and everything would be swell.
We arrived at 8:07 pm and the door was locked. There were still customers in the store and as one customer left, I explained to the employee -who unlocked the door – that we were told by a VERIZON customer support person that the store was open until 8:30. I also shared a brief synopsis of the ongoing saga hoping she would realize that simply doing the transfer would be the best option.
After a brief congenial exchange of words, the only thing I accomplished was to embarrass my daughter by saying, “Wow I can’t believe you will not accommodate us. I am definitely going to tweet about this.” The Verizon store employee’s tone turned more even more congenial after I mentioned twitter, but from that moment on it was apparent that everything she said came straight from a script. It was a bit eerie.
Total time spent – 3 hours and 20 minutes. And the saga continues, because the photos still have not been transferred to the new phone and now Miss Thing isn’t speaking to me. VERIZON FAIL
Update
Thursday Sept 16, 2010 the following exchange occurred on twitter:
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FROM @VZWMichelle (approximately 10:00am ) :
@AmyStark I work for #Verizon. If you still need help transferring pix to new phone, @dataisking may be able to help.
FROM ME a few minutes after receiving the tweet from Michelle:
@VZWMichelle your response came too late. Miss Thing will no longer talk to me about because I embarrassed her http://bit.ly/dhKOyi
( then I added a second tweet )
@VZWMichelle I mean no disrespect to you, I’m sure U R lovely, but the post hit FB and Twitter 9/9 @10:18pm You are just now responding?
( about a half hour later )
FROM @VZWMichelle:
@AmyStark Sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner. I hope the information is helpful.
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No it is not helpful, Michelle, and if you are only in charge of Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky you REALLY need to respond to legitimate complaints sooner – especially when they are this well documented and can be completely verified through your records. I’m not just some Verizon hater, I’ve been a customer for over five years. There was a serious drop of the customer service ball and waiting six days to respond by directing me to some OTHER person – when I had already invested over three hours – is truly unacceptable.
Hi Amy – I was just curious, now that it’s been a week since your post, did you receive any response from verizon? Other than selectively ignoring the negativity about their brand, I can’t believe that they are not following how their name comes up in posts on the web! I would’ve thought an apology, either by a v. store or corporate would have come your way!
Wow Debbie, It’s weird that you posted that question at the same time I was posting an update. As a side note, I’ve never had spam issues with my blog until I posted the Ver1zon blog, now I’m getting hit with spam from everywhere.
Thanks, Adam. @JadeMason just recommended the same thing on twitter. We have the photos on the computer, finally. The last step .. Miss Thing wants to load them on her new Pantec Jest. -/ http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=5355&changingCompletedOrder=&capId=&phoneTopRated= /- but I’ll take a look at the site you mention. Thanks again and nice to meet you!
I used to have an LG phone on Verizon (enV2) and initially had a lot of trouble with using the MicroSD card for photo transfers. The card did not seat well, so the phone would only recognize it about 25% of the time.
The best solution for me was to use an app on my PC call BitPim (http://www.bitpim.org/)
It isn’t the most user-friendly solution, and it takes a little setup to get going (you have to download a driver from the Verizon site). Once that is setup and you have the appropriate USB cable (the enV2 used a micro-USB) it was fairly simple to retrieve pictures from the phone or download them to it.
Thanks Anita I will let Miss Thing know about that as soon as she starts talking to me again. I appreciate the helpful words. How are things with you? I haven’t tweeted with you in forever =)
Lainie – She may take it better from you. I just can’t believe that the Verizon employee wouldn’t just do it for us. As I understood from the last customer support person on the phone it would have been easy, painless and quick if they followed the directions sent. I also can’t believe I politely threatened to “tweet” about it.
Verizon customer service sucks – they’ll eventually fix it or not. Tell Miss Thing to get over it and have patience!! Pictures are the last thing she should be worried about!!
Amy,
I’ve never actually done this, but I’ve read that with Verizon you can send text messages from the computer to the phone. It might be worth checking to see if you can send the photos via picture message from the computer to the phone since you do have them on the computer. I don’t make any guarantees & haven’t researched it, but just wanted to offer the thought.
Good luck!
Anita